Bocce was the main event for our July 4th Extravaganza! Even with two full sets of balls (supporting up to 8 players at a time), we still had to do multiple games to accommodate everyone who wanted to play, taking up the entire afternoon.
The first round, we split into two games of around 7 players each. The first three players from each game to reach 5 points qualified for the finals, and immediately stopped playing after qualifying to leave the others to battle it out. The final round was a shorter game with the top six players competing to be the first to 3 points.
The first game consisted of Zach, Luke, Noah, Colin, Kaeti, and Ray. They took a meandering (and ultimately hazardous) path around the pond and past the deck, temporarily losing a ball in the pond and then shattering a hummingbird feeder with an errant throw. As the game dragged on and players started worrying about how long it was taking, Colin and Kaeti bowed out to let the players with higher scores continue on. Though Luke held the lead for a long time throughout the middle of the game, Zach finally became the first to qualify for the finals, followed by Noah and then Luke.
A couple late arrivals ended up swelling the size of the second game to 8 players: Matt, Michelle, Reed, Kyle, Mihail, Gennie, Michael, and Caitlin. It very quickly became clear that Matt was going to win, as he scored 4 points before anyone else had more than 1. After Matt won his final point to qualify, the scores progressed more evenly until Michelle won the second finals spot. After that, it seemed impossible for anyone to get more than 4 points: what started out as a wide spread of scores got narrower and narrower until every single person had 4 points and was vying for that coveted last spot in the final game. A spinning trick shot for Reed finally won him the last point, letting him advance to the final round.
Since the last round had fewer players and played to only 3 points, it went much more quickly than the previous games. Zach took a decisive early win to secure himself the gold, followed by Luke winning silver and finally Matt winning the bronze!
